The Karnataka High Court on Monday heard against the central government’s order to block certain accounts, URLs and tweets by microblogging platform Twitter. Twitter challenged the orders on the grounds that they violated free speech, and authorities did not issue notices to the alleged violators before asking Twitter to remove the content. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) had filed a 101-page objection on Twitter’s petition on September 1. Senior advocate Arvind Datar took to Twitter online on Monday and argued that the company was complying with the rules laid down in the Information Technology Act.
He claimed that Twitter as a platform has been affected by the Center asking alleged violators to remove their accounts without issuing a notice.
According to him, the Center was asking for wholesale blocking of accounts which would affect its business.
He said that many famous people have accounts on Twitter. Another contention raised by Datar was that accounts were being asked to be blocked due to political content instead of tweets deemed inappropriate.
He cited the example of farmers’ protests in Delhi and claimed that Twitter was asked to block content broadcast in the news media.
“I was asked to block accounts during farmers’ agitation. TV and print media are reporting. Why am I being asked to block accounts?”, he argued.
Datar cited the Supreme Court in the ‘Shreya Singhal’ case in which the IT Act blocking rules were upheld and said even intermediaries like Twitter are mandated to issue notices and be heard before passing blocking orders.
Therefore, he claimed that all the blocking orders issued by MeitY are contrary to the SC judgment and Blocking Rules 6 and 8 of the IT Act. The senior counsel presented an example of a specific blocking order in which Twitter was asked to block 1,178 accounts. The government has not informed them (the account holders) and Twitter is not allowed to inform either. Datar argued that the requirements of Section 69A of the IT Act were not followed. He cited an example of a tweet that the government ordered to be taken down. Datar argued that Twitter itself blocks tweets it deems wrong.
He said, “Tweets promoting ‘Khalistan’ are blocked by Twitter. However, 50 to 60 percent of the tweets that the government asks to be blocked are “innocuous”. Datar said that Twitter does not accept and there are tweets that are not acceptable. They are regularly removed. The government order also contained tweets which were justified in blocking. What Twitter was looking for was following all procedures and issuing notices before blocking tweets. It was also emphasized that the reason for blocking accounts rather than individual tweets. Citing the Delhi High Court judgement. was given in which the owner of the blocked account went to court. The Center was also made a party which argued that it was wrong to block the entire account. The High Court ruled that Twitter cannot suspend the entire account unless the majority of tweets from that account are illegal.
The High Court adjourned the hearing till October 17.